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What Happens @ Brunch?

We at Maxwell’s Playbook are so thrilled about the first season of our Brunch Series! Together with a fierce community of women, we have covered topics and experiences that made us all stronger. We kicked things off last September with our first speaker and uber GF, Tonya Sharpe of Live Nation, who talked about the power of women’s friendships and why your tribe is crucial to every woman’s well-being.

Next we tackled how to make the most of your network with The Muse writer, Abbey Wolf, who showed us that if you determine how you can help someone, instead of how they can help you, you have a better chance of developing a true relationship.

Exploring venues beyond Matchbox, our host restaurant, MP women supported one of our own, shopping at Studio Twenty8Fifty7, the Leesburg clothing and home décor boutique owned by Jewell Green and Janice Harvey. In January we kicked off 2017 with a Fitness Party Boot Camp with personal trainer FitChic SheRo who challenged us with a workout designed to get us focused on building better bodies in the new year.

In February, life coach Christy Little Jones encouraged us to love ourselves as we are, and reminded us that we are not required to change simply to please other people. A personal branding exercise with author and branding expert Marva Goldsmith taught us how to intentionally develop the “personal brand” that we want to share.

MP women also heard from Brian Tinsman, an amazing storyteller and digital media guru, on managing social media. We can all post for fun but again, if you want to be intentional about your brand and messaging, it takes some thought and planning!

At the end of the season, we had something very special lined up for our women. We had heard from awesome speakers over several months, but I really wanted our women to hear from each other. They are all doing such terrific things – volunteering, starting and owning businesses, hustling in their 9 to 5 – and we wanted to give them a chance to tell others what was up. So we decided to have those who were interested to do “elevator pitches” for the crowd.

Advance preparation was required and those who were interested filled out a short questionnaire which included the question, “What would help you get to the next level?” Our women are doing things like creating spaces and activities for young adults who have special needs; creating an app to help women have better health and beauty experiences; designing a clothing line; running a marketing operation for a project and consulting management firm; raising thousands of dollars to benefit women and children, and more. Our women are #BOSS!

Everyone was thrilled to hear from them all. But what they didn’t know is that Maxwell’s Playbook would take a page from Oprah and Ellen. After all of the pitches, we gave each of them something that we believed would help them get to that next level that they mentioned in the questionnaire. We helped to fund space and activities for those with special needs. We gave supplies to the clothing designer and a really cool auction item to help with fund raising for women and children and more.

The point here is not to brag about Maxwell but to show that we are bringing together a community of women who are already terrific, and giving them tools and encouragement – empowering – them to do the things that they are already on the road to accomplishing. I am so proud of them all.

For women in the DMV/Northern Virginia area, I invite you to join us and become a part of this wonderful tribe. There is so much that we can all do together!